As you’re provided with new opportunities to learn and progress, your opinion on what you knew prior to the experiences invariably changes. Continual growth and reshaping of your mindset and philosophies is crucial to remaining up to speed within your profession of choice. This holds true even more so in the profession of strength and conditioning as our understanding of the body and its intricacies grows. Since I began my internship here at Northeastern only a few short weeks ago, I’ve come to understand the philosophy and the approach the strength and conditioning department and the sports performance department as a whole follow when it comes to the training of the student-athletes. The emphasis is on injury prevention and the health of the athletes, and now that I’ve seen how that philosophy is implemented, I completely agree.
In my previous experiences in strength and conditioning settings, I had seen various forms of testing and screening procedures, but most were performance related. Beginning with my first day of work, I realized that the training process at Northeastern was significantly different from what I was accustomed to. And it continued when I saw the time and thought that was applied to the programming for each of the teams. I had only seen relatively global exercises programmed on a large scale across several teams, with small tweaks depending on each sport’s specific needs. Once I began aiding in the coaching of several teams here, I realized how different most of the programs truly were from one another. Significantly more time is placed on considering the movement patterns, physiological needs, and injury concerns for each sport and the programs are written accordingly. Though it sounds like a common sense approach, I can honestly say it is not performed in this manner at every college or private facility. And now that I’ve had the opportunity to aid in the implementation of several of the coaches programs for their teams, I truly appreciate the care that is taken in considering what the athletes truly need.
Aside from the philosophy itself and the focus on injury prevention and keeping the athletes healthy and performing at their peak, I’ve learned about what to focus on in terms of programming and coaching. Obviously I have much more to learn throughout the course of the internship, but the first few weeks have still been great learning experiences. I had never focused on movement patterns, and small instabilities and compensations to the extent that I do now. And because I keep continually asking questions, I keep learning more about the body and how to spot small but incorrect movements and techniques performed by athletes that deemphasize the main focus of each of the exercises. Just in the last three weeks, my experiences here have altered how I view lifting and training as a whole, and I now see strength and conditioning and how it can be utilized in a whole new light. Though I’m sure my opinion on training and the optimal way to help athletes reach their peak performance capabilities will change throughout the years, the emphasis on correcting body mechanics and movement patterns for the sake of injury prevention will always be my first thought from now on.